Now that peak woke has passed, Louisiana has a better chance of educating its children.
Woke is acquiring belief in the notion that society, with government institutions to match, was irredeemably racist in its present form until interventions created equity in outcomes, meaning that observed differences in outcomes by race unimpeachably indicated racism in action with any other explanation considered invalid. As a corrective measure, treating races differently because of race is blessed; in other words, neo-racism poses as anti-racism.
And as soon as Democrat Pres. Joe Biden assumed office, he embarked on a woke agenda (Vice Pres. Kamala Harris, his attempted heir apparent, already was there well in advance), replicated down the line to other Democrats. It also washed over institutions and people who should have known better, such as Louisiana’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education that had at the time a 6-5 Republican majority.
Still, that didn’t prevent BESE from going off the deep end. Its then-president and still a member Republican Sandy Holloway publicly testified that “systemic and institutionalized racism and sexism do exist” and its executive Superintendent Cade Brumley assented to a training program that promotes the notion that white teachers and administrators harbor “implicit bias” against children of other races that makes them treat those children unjustly. Specifically, the training was intended for public school leaders and personnel in schools with a high rate of student suspensions that included a unit in social and emotional learning through a racial equity lens. SEL by then had begun carrying water for critical race theory, the guiding principle behind wokeism that advocates for neo-racism posing as anti-racism.
The suspension issue was considered important because of the “school to prison pipeline” myth that maintains more severe disciplinary actions beget future criminal behavior, thusly suspensions, especially if school employers weren’t properly reeducated to a woke understanding that implicit bias was rampant within themselves and all around them, would manufacture criminals and harsh punishments as disciplinary measures should be used quiet sparingly. The problem is that no quality study has determined the myth exists, because these don’t differentiate well the reasons behind suspensions that could be prone or not prone to implicit bias, nor do they resolve the causal arrow of student behavior causing criminal behavior associated with rather than mediated by school discipline.
That was then. Now, some three years later, BESE has a 9-2 GOP majority, but more importantly the Legislature has given it direction through statutes to use suspensions and other disciplinary measures more frequently – in concert with educators through a forum spurred by BESE and Brumley. Earlier this year, he organized a task force designed to collect data from educators with an eye towards improving their ability to teach in the classroom. Part of the initiative’s conclusions squared with legislation that came into force this week, that teachers should not be discouraged from controlling and have better means by which to control classrooms, including removing disruptive students.
This stands as a repudiation that stricter discipline was forbidden because it disproportionately lands on black students that therefore must signal implicit bias if not outright structural racism, whether consciously employed. As Brumley noted, disciplinary relaxation spurred by this brought too many classroom management difficulties and the new laws should bring things back into balance.
It’s a sign peak woke has past, although there’s still plenty of it to confuse and disserve those in education and those being educated. Every step out of the mire helps.
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